See Grayson's FB post. Presenting the facts on actual work done in Congress, Grayson has done more in one day than Rubio has done in five years. For all their talk about personal responsibility and work ethic, and the Republicans want a slacker like Rubio for a President? Thing is, they're all talk and no action.

See this article. You won't hear the regressives talking about this, just blustering away with spin not connected in any way to reality. Obama's ISIS strategy recently killed some of the Paris bombing leaders, while it also contributed to the liberation of some formerly held ISIS cities in Iraq and Syria.

See this article. So the rich corrupt the system to pay as little tax as possible, or even none. Which leave the rest of us struggling to make ends meet to make up the difference. And when said difference cannot be made up the paid lapdogs in Congress cut programs that are designed to help the rest of us survive when we are thrown only the crumbs of the rich. And this is the great capitalistic system that provides opportunity for all? If you buy that myth sold to us by the rich, the very ones rigging capitalism for their benefit and our detriment, and keep voting for their lackeys in Congress, then let's face it, you are a fucking idiot.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

In this interview Sanders said that Trump is smart in knowing how to manipulate the media, hence all the free airtime he gets in comparison to Sanders. Sanders blames the media for just airing extreme bloviation and bravado because it gets ratings. The interviewer admits it drives ratings and gets the time. So its also a cultural problem in that we the people, at least some of its dimmer lights, are impressed with show over substance. But then Sanders says its also because Trump's antics has to do with his playing on fear and hatred, again appealing to and inciting our lower drives to block out our higher angels. I don't think Trump is smart at all but that he is genuinely self-absorbed and narcissistic to the point that he believes everything he says. The media giving him all the attention because it's sensational and appealing to the unhealthy aspects of our most base instincts and is just plain sick and nothing to be admired.

See this video. It's a question at this point, not an indictment based on conspiracy paranoia. It is curious though that the guy in Sanders' campaign that was fired over this was recommended to his campaign by the DNC and the company whose data was breached. While there is no evidence of this I would not put it past the DNC, since they are obviously rigging the nomination in favor of Clinton.

Bernie is taking on Trump. On Sunday, during an appearance on “Face
the Nation,” Bernie said he’d to a better job representing the economic
interests of Trump’s middle-class and blue-collar followers, because
Trump opposes raising the minimum wage and supports tax cuts for
higher-income earners. At a rally Sunday night in Las Vegas, Bernie
noted that “there are people out there, Donald Trump and others, who are
attempting to do what demagogues have always done, and that is instead
of bringing people together to address and solve the real problems that
we face, what they try to do is tap the anger and the frustration that
people are feeling and then divide us up. So we have a message to Trump
and all the others out there who want to divide us up: No, we’re not
going to hate Latinos, we’re not going to hate Muslims, we are going to
stand together.”

For you holarcacy buffs, see this article. I explored holacracy quite a
bit in the Ning IPS anti-capitalism thread but thought its anachronistic
attachment to capitalism tainted the otherwise general shift to the
neo-Commons. This offshoot might address that drawback.

"We’ve both experimented with different forms of organisational
governance structures for our organisations, and we’ve systematically
found that fluid, holonic structures works best. However, we felt that
the traditional Holacracy model wasn’t
entirely suitable for us, because it wasn’t fluid enough for the type of
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations(DAO) and Distributed
Collaborative Organization(DCO) swarm structures we're building. Hence,
we decided to codify a 'Liquid Holacracy' governance model. We hope the
open source model will be useful for organisations both inside and
outside of the crypto space."

See his Integral Global FB post here. In one response he notes that some form of needed integral ethics has as yet been instituted. I replied: I
wrote about instituting such ethical injunctions in this 2004 article.
Granted it was about a different domain but applicable nonetheless. 11
years later and nothing like this has been instituted.

This article exposes the hypocrisy, since no US politician will bring up Saudi Arabia's explicit support of Wahhabist terrorism, not to mention its numerous public beheadings for the most trivial of crimes. Why? Oil, of course, and their control of that market. And that means money. The US jihad on Islamic terrorism is bogus because it won't confront its leading state supporter.

"One aspect of this phenomenon has to do with the fact that labels such
as 'conservative' and 'liberal' are gradually becoming meaningless
outside of Washington D.C. The differences between 'right' and 'left'
are increasingly blurry, as individual voters can hold liberal views on
some issues and conservative views on others."

Sunday, December 27, 2015

See this article. I
studied martial tai chi chuan for 7 years with a Master and his top
students and the magical stories are bunk. Yes, I experienced great
skill via this tradition but not magic. And it was physiologically based
that required rigorous training and due diligence. I also taught it for
a time and had to defend myself from challengers that had more to do
with my skill than with any inherent powers of tai chi over any other
martial form. Still, even within that tradition there were quite a few
students enamored of the magical stories and myths, generally the less
skilled who didn't practice enough to be any good.

It struck me that Derrida's descriptions
of khora and differance sound reminiscent of Wilber's description of
consciousness per se in Integral Spirituality (Shambhala, 2007). For example Wilber says in Chapter 2:

"This happens to fit nicely with the
Madhyamaka-Yogachara Buddhist view of consciousness as emptiness or
openness. Consciousness is not anything itself, just the degree of
openness or emptiness, the clearing in which the phenomena of the
various lines appear (but consciousness is not itself a phenomena—it is
the space in which phenomena arise)" (66).

Compare with this from Deconstruction in a Nutshell (Fordham UP, 1997):

“But something like khora is
'indeconstructible' not because she/it is a firm foundation, like a
metaphysical ground or principle... Rather her indeconstructibility
arises because she is...the space in whicheverything
constructible and deconstructible is constituted, and hence...older,
prior, preoriginary. Far from being a likeness to the God of the
monotheisms...[it] is better compared to...the incomparable,
unmetaphorizable, desert-like place without properties or genus....which
is not be to confused with the Eternal, Originary Truth...of the
intelligible paradigms above” (97-8).

I went into an exploration of Wilber's use of CPS on pages 4 and 5
of the IPN thread, how I think he uses the distinction metaphysically.
So let's see how Derrida might be different. “Let us then, like the
fool...ask 'what' differance 'is,' in a nutshell....[it] doesn't 'mean'
anything at all” (99). After that quote Caputo launches into a
discussion of linguistics, about how any word can only be defined in
context with other words, and how that definition will change depending
on the context of different words around it. In that sense meaning is
all within relative context, and yet that differential between meanings,
that space or interval in which meaning takes place, is itself not part
of the context or meaning. Thus there is not one “essential” meaning of
any word because it is contextualized within this play of differences,
the play itself being a groundless ground in which meaning takes place.

LP posted this 'integral' analysis of Trump at FB. I appreciated Juma's comment: "Has 'integral' become
so knotted and delusional that one could read this, nod thoughtfully,
and believe something has been said? What tripe." And Tree deciding to
block LP. It's why I don't much read LP anymore, or kennilingus
generally. It's tries so hard to fit everything into its ideological
boxes and ends up generally missing salients points. It's akin to what Zak said about the kennilingus reaction to anti-capitalism.

There has been some discussion of Hegelian dialectics in the FB IPS forum, so I posted this response:

As
noted at length in the Ning IPS forum, Hegelian dialectics is the basis
for the kennilingus acceptance of e.g. the model of hierarchical
complexity (MHC). But there is another form of complexity that doesn't
require that Hegelian dialectical logic. And no, it is not just
'horizontal' complexity as reduced by the MHC. As but one example, from this Ning post, with Caputo discussing Zizek's recontextualization of
Hegel's dialectic, akin to what Cameron talks about. I'd add the
capitalism is part of the formal logic of Hegelian dialectics.

Saturday, December 26, 2015

Similar to Cardinal O'Malley. See this article where the Pope said: "In a society so often intoxicated by consumerism and hedonism, wealth
and extravagance, appearances and narcissism, this [Christ] child calls us to act
soberly, in other words, in a way that is simple, balanced, consistent,
capable of seeing and doing what is essential."

"The
commons works best by consensus and, unlike capitalism, does not depend
on constant growth. It provides shared access to important resources so
that human needs can be met with potential equity. Anti-capitalist
globalisation could be labelled positively as the movement for the
commons…. Capitalism seeks to extend commodification; the
anti-capitalist movement resists by conserving the commons."

An accurate
rejoinder to the kennilingus apologists that think we must 'include'
Republican and/or libertarian elements like conscious capitalism to be
'integral.' (And which will be dismissed by said apologists as mean green meme without further ado.)

"Somehow,
some of the titans of tech have gotten the misguided idea that they are
exemplars of libertarian self-created success. Nothing could be further
from the truth. The Silicon Valley runs on government-subsidized
technology, from microchips to the Internet itself. Corporations like
Amazon used government-created tax breaks to build near-monopoly
leverage and turn it against their suppliers.

"Nowadays
the Silicon Valley is either celebrated as a hotbed of creativity or
condemned as a cauldron of greed and wealth inequality.

"While there are certainly some talented and even idealistic people in the Valley, there’s also an excess of shallowlibertarianism,
from people who have enriched themselves with government-created
technology who then decide they’re being held back by government. That’s
shortsighted and vain. And yes, there are serious problems with sexism
and age discrimination – problems which manifest themselves with some
ugly behavior.

Say those defenders of guns for everyone. If they are just trained and licensed properly then they'll protect us from the bad guys with guns, since police can't possibly handle it all by themselves. For those who believe this propoganda read this article about examples of good guys with guns that went horribly wrong.

I'm reading the book before I see the movie. So far the book though it seems the Wall Street banks that created collaterzied debt obligations (CDOs) didn't
realize the housing market would fail. It's almost like the 'outsiders'
were the only ones that saw the crash coming. My impression from Taibbi
though is that Wall Street also not only bet on the failure but
purposely engineered it.

See this article for details, which explores the following bizarre and disturbing regressive events of the year: completely paranoid and fantasy no go zones; vaccination hysteria; the invasion of Texas; discrimination hiding behind religious freedom; denial of, and complicity with, white racist terrorism; Duggar family values; the Trump phenomenon. Thing is, regressives will not see them as anything but justifiable and normal.

Which
is why even the corporate Democrats (moderate Republicans) like the DNC
are horrified by Sanders, while the American people are ecstatic. I've
often said, and I'll say it again agreeing with Chomsky, that today's
Democratic Party are what Republicans
used to be. And today's Republican Party are regressive and doomed to
the dustbin of history. What must emerge is a Progressive Party to
replace the Republican Party, the base of which is already the
Congressional Progressive Caucus. (To which Sanders belongs, btw.) Then
they and the (moderately Repubican) Democratic Party can hash it out. Not
for a long time, granted. Eventually the Republican Party will go the
way of the Whig Party. The bigots, xenophobes and racists will still be
around; they just won't, and shouldn't be, represented.

I
explored this question in depth in this Ning IPS thread. The short of
it is that so-called third tier is actually just more integrated archaic
structures via meditative or other similar methods. Therefore they are
not 'above' the other stages as higher
developmental levels but 'folded' over/under. Then again, neither are
the so-called higher cognitive stages of meta-systemic, paradigmatic and
cross-paradigmatic but rather horizontal extensions of formal logic.
There is quite a bit of alternative 'integral' research in that thread
to support this thesis.

Even if it's representatives are mostly regressive and don't listen. This article details some progressive victories in 2015. And encourages us to keep fighting to implement an agenda that moves forward, not backward. Plus we must get out the vote and change Congress to continue this evolution of our species, for as is the current Congress very well might destroy the planet if we do not. A few samples from the article:

1) A growing
number of workers are earning more – thanks to local and state
progressive-pushed initiatives to raise the minimum wage and new
overtime rules.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

"Dramatically raising workers’ wages, Hanauer argues, won’t lead to fewer
jobs, as his opponents claim. It will lead to more jobs, because
workers who have more money will create demand for more products and
services, thereby creating a 'positive feedback loop' of prosperity. He
and Liu call their theory 'middle-out economics,' a term President Obama
began using during his 2012 campaign, juxtaposing it with the 'trickle-down' ideas of the right. In this, they are appealing to the
self-interest, rather than the charitable sense, of the rich. 'It is not
a case based on niceness and compassion; it is a case based on
winning,' Liu told me."

This this article. Patti Davis said of the current GOP candidates that her father "would be so appalled at these candidates." And that if her father ran today "I don't think the GOP would support him." Smart woman. You can hear the entire interview at the link.

Is
this clip they show that in polls for months Sanders beats all
Republican candidates, while Clinton does not. It belies the BS spin by
the Corporate Dems, and their kennilingus apologists, that only Clinton
has a chance to beat them.

This is from Fox News, mind you, as of 2:36 pm EST in the US. People have to be inclined to go to Fox News in the first place, which progressives are most definitely not. I only went to see this for myself from a FB feed. If Sanders is doing this well at Fox that's astounding.

In this article the NYT no longer even pretends at objective coverage of the campaign. They pretty much ignore Sanders to effusively praise Clinton, and completely ignore her unsubstantiated claims. They, like the DNC, make no pretense to back the corporate Democrat who backs their kind of faux progressivism in the name of the almighty dollar.

See this article on the topic. Joseph did a FB post on it here where he said:

"Without a strong critique of existing structures, any psycho-spiritual
movement (Integral included) is prone to becoming coopted by those
existing structures. Integral's main thesis (accellerationist in
nature) is predicated on structural change through a developmental
progression of values (red-amber-orange-green-teal..), and yet the
injunctions that it seems to offer (individual meditation and
psychological work) don't seem adequate to addressing the collective
structural issues facing us today. OR do they?"

Sunday, December 20, 2015

The great American middle class has become an anxious class — and
it's in revolt. Before I explain how that revolt is playing out, you
need to understand the sources of the anxiety. Start with the
fact that the middle class is shrinking, according to the Pew Research
Center. The odds of falling into poverty are frighteningly high,
especially for the majority of the population who lack college degrees.
Two-thirds of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Most could
lose their jobs at any time. Many are part of a burgeoning "on-demand"
workforce — employed as needed, paid whatever they can get whenever they
can get it. Yet if they don't keep up with rent or mortgage payments,
or can't pay for groceries or utilities, they'll lose their footing.

The stress is taking a toll. For the first time in history, the life
spans of middle-class whites are dropping. According to research by
Nobel-prize-winning economist Angus Deaton and his co-researcher Anne
Case, middle-aged white men and women in the United States have been
dying earlier. They're poisoning themselves with drugs and alcohol, or
committing suicide. The odds of being gunned down in America by a
jihadist are far smaller than the odds of such self-inflicted deaths,
but the recent tragedy in San Bernardino, California, only heightens an
overwhelming sense of arbitrariness and fragility.

Over holiday meals. Even though I agree with Reich is this video, in that he counters several regressive talking points with facts, this never works with regressives. They don't accept facts, instead seeing some socialist conspiracy hiding within them. Calm, rational discussion is wasted on them. My strategy is to just tell them NO POLITICS at family gatherings, period. Let's just focus on family love. Otherwise, just write off this 20% of so of the regressive US population and focus on the rest when making fact-based arguments to sway voters.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

See this article for more. Following are just a couple of examples. This is exactly what you get when you vote for the GOP. If you know this and do it you're evil. If you're ignorant and vote for this you're an idiot.

In addition to all of the new provisions in this year’s budget bill, one
of the worst riders from the 2014 “cromnibus” bill that deregulated
derivatives trading on Wall Street will remain in effect. The
deregulation bill reverses portions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform
act of 2010, and allows big banks to get away with the same high-risk
gambling on complex financial instruments that caused the 2008 financial
crisis. Wall Street lobbyists actually wrote most of the language in the bill that was snuck into last year’s budget bill.

See this article. JPM was a key player in outright fraud in the financial crises for knowingly selling the junk bonds that crashed the economy. As this article details, there were several other frauds they had to pay fines on. The most recent is a $307 million fine for selling their own mutual and hedge funds to clients without giving them an option on lower-fee funds available from other vendors. When will Congress get the obvious fact that these big banks are scumbags whose sole intent is to rip off everyone for their own profit and hold them accountable via law? Same goes for the Justice Dept., who only fine them instead of putting those responsible in jail.

Here is Senator Warren's email blast on the victories in Congress' spending Bill. She rightly credits we the people for doing our part to pass legislation that protects us from Wall Street. She said:

Edward,

Last December, Citigroup lobbyists slipped a last-minute provision into
the must-pass spending bill to make it easier for the biggest banks to
get bailed out by taxpayers.
We did everything we could to stop that lousy provision. I gave
speeches, people signed petitions, groups called Congress. But it was
too late. Congress couldn’t let the government shut down.

We lost a year ago, but we did not go away quietly. Every time the
Republicans have tried to sneak another terrible provision into a bill,
you’ve helped us sound the alarm. You’ve signed petitions, made calls,
tweeted, and posted on Facebook. When two Wall Street banks threatened
to withhold their contributions to Senate Democrats because of our work,
you quadruple-matched their money. You’ve made it clear that if they
want to rig the system, we’re going to fight back.

With a must-pass spending bill on the table, the Wall Street banks came at us in full force – but
we fought them back! Yesterday, Congress passed another spending bill
without a single provision to materially weaken the rules on Wall
Street. No gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. No
tying the hands of the cops who police the big banks. No delay of a new
conflict-of-interest rule for retirement advisers.

Since the Paris and San Bernardino attacks. See the facts here. There appears to be no evidence that these Muslim victims have anything to do with ISIS or terrorism. It's purely a matter of bigoted xenophobia incited by the likes of Trump and Fox News. And this is home-grown US terrorism afflicted on law-abiding Muslims who are US citizens.

I disagree with this article: It is not a deterioration of the regressive base that Trump manipulates. It's always been that
way and Trump just exposes it for what it is, as well as how the GOP
establishment has always manipulated it too. The latter just used code
language, while Trump just lays it bare. He really does represent the
Party as a whole and should be their candidate.

See this story, where a Sanders staffer inadvertently accessed Clinton's section of the database. The DNC promptly denied the Sanders campaign access to their own section. This access is critical with primaries right around the corner. It seems like just one more DNC tactic to derail the Sanders campaign, so fight back via this petition to restore Sanders access.

See this article. He thinks we should give up on saving the planet from this crisis, as it's going to happen anyway. Instead we should focus our limited resources on preparing cities to adapt to the impending climate disasters.

See this article. The CWA is 700,000 strong. Sanders has always promoted unions as a means to achieve fair income distribution, worker safety, etc. It's good to see them listening to their members, unlike some other unions, and endorsing the union candidate.

Following up on the last post, Robert Reich's FB post shows exactly what the tenets of Wall Street operates within:

"Martin
Shkreli -- the 32-year-old former hedge-fund manager and CEO of Turning
Pharmaceuticals, who bought and then jacked up the price of 62-year-old
critical drug used for newborns and HIV patients by more than 4,000
percent -- was arrested this morning. Not because of this greedy deal
but because he allegedly defrauded investors at his hedge fund.

Shrkeli is the asshole that bought a company that makes anti-AIDS medication and promptly raised the price 5000%. Now he'd been arrested and charged with securities fraud (big surprise) so Borowitz parodies the situation (following):

BROOKLYN (The Borowitz Report)—A
criminal lawyer representing Turing Pharmaceuticals chief Martin
Shkreli has informed his client that he is raising his hourly legal fees
by five thousand per cent, the lawyer has confirmed.

Minutes
after Shkreli’s arrest on charges of securities fraud, the attorney,
Harland Dorrinson, announced that he was hiking his fees from twelve
hundred dollars an hour to sixty thousand dollars.

See this article, where the University of Essex has ditched exams for philosophy students. This is a lot like my BA in English at ASU:

"Exams clearly have their merits. But in the advanced study of a
subject like philosophy, we need to test students’ ability to think in
an original and creative way, rather than simply their power of recall. Formal exam conditions are poorly suited to testing the skills that
are honed by a philosophy degree: problem-solving, independent learning,
collaboration, interpretation and presentation; attributes that are
prized by employers across a range of careers."

See this excellent article. Since the Pope's Encyclical made clear our spiritual duty to address
climate change, what can we do to challenge COP21's misleading spin? The
article has some good suggestions. The intro to the article:

"Strong, smart adults do not want to be fed false hopes, false targets or
false facts. They want to know the way things really are so that they
can adapt to or effectively manage what actually is there. If you would
like to quickly cut through the Paris Climate Conference media spin as well as other greenwashing from the poorly informed concerning the Paris agreement and results, keep reading..."

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

That's all these clowns have, peddling fear as the lowest common denominator. Kill the dark radical terrorists (and their families and innocent bystanders) but not a peep about guns, climate change or domestic white terrorists, all of which kill far, far more in the US than Islamic terrorists. Oh, and don't forget to fear all the Muslim refugees who are themselves fleeing for their lives from the Islamic terrorists, since this must somehow be a trick to get into the US and kill us all. This is exactly the sort of rhetoric indicative of a shift to a fascist state and exactly what the regressive GOP wants. All of them, not just Trump. Except for Paul, that is.

See this article. Just this one jet can house every homeless person. And the Congressional psychopaths say we don't have the money for food stamps or social security. We do, they would just rather have a jet that pays off their Masters.

Following up on this post, Beck noted that the progressive
movement is 7th code, aka yellow. And that the 8th code (aka turquoise)
is emerging and more relevant, which imo is the neo-Commons. Which
reminds me of this and this recent post.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

"When people say they want to become more like Jesus, they usually
mean they want to become a moral person. Such morality is often defined
by religious values shaped by a modern Christian subculture—not all of
which is bad. My suspicion, though, is that if we look closely at Jesus
without our modern moralistic filter, fewer people would want to become
more like Jesus.

"Jesus was an unmarried peasant who didn’t put his 'family first.' All of his followers were mothers and brothers
and sisters and children. Most of his friends were criminals or living
sinful lifestyles. Jesus had hardly any friends who would be considered
“religious.” He spent most of his time with drunks, gluttons,
fornicators, and thieves. He was so close to “sinners” that the
religious leaders thought he was one. And nearly everything Jesus said
and did made religious people mad.

Or just rationalizing a bad climate agreement? See this article. This
is wishful thinking at best. So if the US reneges on its promises they
get shamed? It's already been established that the psychopaths in charge
of Congress do not experience shame. And meanwhile the planet dies? We
need enforceable and binding laws with severe penalties to avoid
catastrophe, hence the US refusal on this.

This is not a satire. Something tells me this is NOT what Jesus would do.

"A Christian-run Kentucky
homeless shelter, Emergency Christian Ministries, just wished homeless
women and children a Merry Christmas by booting them back onto the
streets, claiming that it decided to ban all women
(and their children) in an attempt to stop the 'sex problem.' The
misguided effort has left dozens of women and children on the streets
with nowhere to go, and the situation is bleak — as the closest shelter that is accepting women is a forty minute drive from the town where Emergency Christian Ministries is located."

Yes they did. The Bill would have provided free medical coverage to the 9/11 first responders who got sick from that event. And the Republicans first filibustered it, saying it costs too much. These bastards are all talk about patriotism but when it comes down to actually helping those that put their lives on the line for us they back down every time. And this is what you voted into Congress?

See the video below from Democracy Now. Unlike major media they actually covered the event, including those who are disappointed. In this clip are some of the disappointed about targets being voluntary, the omission of specific dates to reach targets, the weakening of financial access to vulnerable nations, and no mention of military carbon emissions.

Excellent article on those named above who would rather see a Republican President than vote for Clinton if she beats Sanders in the primary.

"It’s legitimate to debate which of the Democratic candidates would be
better, but it’s dishonest and flat out stupid to claim that either is
close to perfect or that either is even in the same paradigm of
awfulness as the Republicans. And it is not just stupid but
unconscionable to relegate others to the incomprehensible suffering
another Republican president would make inevitable, just so one can
pretend to be making a moral stand that is not only immoral but
intellectually vacuous. The very essence of privileged idiocy."

Vikram Zutshi: Have you
delved into the Self/No-Self debate between Hindus and Buddhists? Some
schools of Buddhism come very close to the Vedic concepts of Atman and
Brahman, while others reject it outright. What is your conclusion?

Evan Thompson: This debate is fascinating. It
developed over many centuries and millennia in Indian philosophy. The
concepts of atman and anatman were constantly evolving. On the one hand,
there’s a sharp opposition between, say, Abhidharma Buddhist
philosophy, which holds that what we call a ‘self’ or ‘person’ is
ultimately only a collection of impersonal and momentary mental and
physical events (dharmas), and Hindu Nyāya philosophy, which holds that
the self exists and is an independent thing or substance. On the other
hand, the Mahayana Buddhist idea of an innate Buddha nature
(Tathāgatagarbha) seems conceptually rather close to the Advaita Vedānta
notion of atman or atman-Brahman nonduality. All these philosophical
twists and turns provide a good example of how we can’t talk about
Indian conceptions of self or non-self as if they were monolithic; we
have to refer to specific thinkers and the evolving context of
philosophical debate and contemplative practice.

"I
reject all of this and is yet another example of Wilber attempting to
exploit the Graves model and Spiral Dynamics. He lacks, entirely, the
7th Code, and has no idea how/when/where each of the Codes have emerged.
I will gladly challenge him to a public
debate but he still hides out in his loft in Denver. The whole idea of
"tiers" is uniquely language from our work which he "steals" in order to
market his. The many lacks any ethical basis when he does so. He is
nothing beyond RED-ORANGE. If he wants to develop his own system then he
should do so without exploiting my life time of work which he continues
to do.

“It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say:
‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every
five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just
promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out
there, they will be continued to be burned.”

“While this is a step forward it goes nowhere near far enough. The
planet is in crisis. We need bold action in the very near future and
this does not provide that. In the United States we have a Republican Party which is much more
interested in contributions from the fossil fuel industry than they care
about the future of the planet. That is true all over the globe. We’ve
got to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and fight for national and
international legislation that transforms our energy system away from
fossil fuel as quickly as possible.”

To wit, see Robert Reich's FB post here. Currently the Labor Dept. is working on a rule requiring financial advisors to give such advice to benefit the investor. But the Wall Street lobbies are working furiously to prevent it and want to continue to mislead investors so that Wall Street can continue to manipulate the markets for their benefit while screwing over their investors. This is exactly what happened in the '08 crash, leading investors, both individual and institutional, into knowingly created bad investments so that the Street could short sell them to their own greedy benefit. They're still at it, adding a rider to the funding bill that prevents them from being responsible to investors.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Following up on this post, Andy Borowitz parodies that Scalia would be better off in a "less-advanced" court. He wrote:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A
new study conducted by legal scholars indicates that Justice Antonin
Scalia would fare better if he served as a judge at a court that was
“less advanced” than the United States Supreme Court. According
to the study, Scalia’s struggles to perform his duties in a competent
fashion stem from his being inappropriately placed on a court that is
“too demanding” for a person of his limited abilities.

Klein starts by noting that the Paris talks take as given the gross crossing of scientific, financial and legal red lines that will lead to the dreaded 3-4 degree increase in global climate. Plus there are no penalties for crossing the limits the talks will merely suggest, thanks to insistence by the US. It's starting to more than seem like the talks are fluff to appease people rather than to actually do what needs to be done. So Klein notes that there will be demonstrations on Dec. 12 in defiance of the ban on demonstrations, the latter yet another indication that this meeting is a sham. There is far more in the video by Corbyn and labor union reps on energy democracy via local community control, trade agreements for labor and the environment, renewable energy jobs, etc., all indicative of the rising neo-Commons.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Here are Scalia's blatant racist remarks in an affirmative action case before the court. For him affirmative action is about allowing black's of inferior intellect into schools that are over their heads. Meanwhile of course the facts from the National Science Foundation show that blacks in such prestigious schools do just fine, apparently of equal or better intellect. Ooops, sorry, Scalia doesn't rule based on scientific fact but prejudice.

"Nobody who works full time should live in poverty – especially people
who work in the US Senate. But Senate cafeteria workers earn so little
that many work multiple jobs, some rely on public assistance, and at
least one has been homeless. This is shameful. Today I joined the Senate
cafeteria workers for their Wednesday ‪#‎brownbagboycott‬ – to stand in solidarity with workers fighting for a union and higher wages."

This cartoon though is being generous by just yelling "get out!" These gun nuts would shoot first in this situation justifying it with the paranoid rhetoric we hear from the likes of Trump. And like the white cops that unjustifiably shoot and often kill black men for basically being black, that same sort of lawlessness would apply to those who might shoot Muslims these days.

David Harvey was cited in the last post. See
his video on the revolutionary class today.

"Harvey emphasizes the
importance of thinking up new territorial strategies for class struggle –
a terrain more explored by the anarchist tradition than the classical
Marxist one. He then, paraphrasing
Murray Bookchin, insists that the future of the left depends crucially
on our capacity for putting together the best of Marxism with the best
of anarchism."

Following up on the last post, more from Stein's paper. This is exactly what the neo-Commons is all about:

“Alternative
currencies and time-and-skill sharing cooperatives are only the first
wave of the emerging post-capitalist, post-money economy (Harvey, 2014;
Eisenstein, 2011). Without money as the dominant metric governing
society, what alternative hierarchies of value might emerge?” (41).

"One
important thing missed by summary indices of economic systems (like
GDP, or simple calculations of profit) is intra-systemic
inequalities—the differences between the most well off and the least
well off are disguised. Highly profitable companies and nations with
rapidly rising GDP often house staggering inequalities of wealth. In
fact, in many organizations the rate of profit and the rate of
exploitation (and thus increasing inequality) are correlated (Bowles
& Gintis, 1998; Harvey, 2006). The less you pay workers, the more
you skim off the top, and the more profits go up. GDP is similar, in
that it is the perpetual expansion of the economy that drives numbers
up. GDP goes up as things that used to be free are brought into the
market and given a price. This means that we would be lowering GDP, for
example, by teaching people to grow their own food, or treat simple
aliments with herbs they grow themselves, or start a free neighborhood
parent group that shares childcare. On the other hand, opening a
childcare center, herbal company, or commercial farm expands the economy
and makes the GDP go up. Take something people can do or get for free
and sell it back to them, that is what makes for economic value
according to simplistic growth-oriented measures like the GDP (see
Eisenstein, 2011)."

Please join the Real Economy Lab, the Next System Project and the New Economy Coalition on December 14 at 9am PT, noon ET, 5pm GMT for an interactive webinar discussion on mapping the next system.

The inability of traditional politics and policies to address
fundamental challenges has fueled an extraordinary amount of
experimentation, generating increasing numbers of sophisticated and
thoughtful initiatives that build from the bottom and begin to suggest
new possibilities for addressing deep social, economic and ecological
problems. Thus we encounter the caring economy, the sharing economy, the provisioning economy, the restorative economy, the regenerative economy, the sustaining economy, the collaborative economy, the solidarity economy, the steady-state economy, the gift economy, the resilient economy, the participatory economy, the new economy, and the many, many organizations engaged in related activities.

There are calls for a Great and Just Transition, or for reclamation
of the Commons. Many of these approaches already have significant
constituencies and work underway. Creative thinking by researchers and
engaged scholars is also contributing to the ferment. Although they vary
widely in emphases and approaches, there is a good deal of commonality.
These movements seek an economy that gives true priority to people,
place, and planet.

And yet he is not on Time's short list for Person of the Year. Time, like all big media, refuse to acknowledge Sanders' popularity, or at all, because he challenges their oligarchic narrative. Trump, on the other hand, is in the finals for this category and he received less than a fifth of Sanders' votes. Surprise, surprise.

See this article. While a few Republicans denounce Trump's latest call to prevent all Muslims from entering the US, they are the ones that created Trump's popularity. Their decades old southern strategy was to use code-words to incite prejudice. Now they play on the fear and anxiety of most middle class people who are suffering from job loss and/or lower wages.

In this FB IPS thread Zak Stein asked for examples
of integral training programs. When a few offered criticism of those
programs Zak noted there'd be time enough for that later, as his
thread was just to find out about those programs in existence. This FB IPS
thread is to explore that criticism. See it for the ongoing discussion.

How about forums such as this as
legitimate integral educational programming? We have several
academics here that share their knowledge to many that cannot afford
institutional tuition. Plus there are quite a few bright and highly
self-educated folks here that are not institutional academics who add
astute analysis and innovative systhesis to the integral database.

There is a marked difference in
educational approach between the standard academic degree
credentialing model and the P2P peer credentialing model, the latter
being an example of the emerging neo-Commons worldview where peers
value each other on the actual merits of their contributions without
requiring institutional degree authority. Which is not to say that
any old view is of equivalent value. But smart folks, institutional
or not, can tell when someone's views are intelligent, relevant,
sound and make a contribution to a project or not. To just ignore or
dismiss non-academics though, as if that is the only authority worth
attention, is part and parcel of a rapidly defunct educational model
as widely documented BY academics on the emerging neo-Commons and P2P
movements.

Monday, December 7, 2015

Reich talks about how much money they have and what they do with it. They are so divorced from the reality of everyone else and the environmental world that their only concern is making even more money. Reich makes clear the costs of such an attitude on the economy and the climate. He offers some policies to remedy this situation.

See this article. He's going to institute a carbon tax on oil companies to pay for reducing carbon emission 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. He's also going to repeal oil company subsidies and create 10 million clean energy jobs. He'll provide retraining to oil workers for these new jobs. He will also "outright ban offshore drilling, ban
Arctic drilling, block natural gas exports, stop attempts to lift a
decades-old ban on crude oil exports, support states trying to ban
natural gas fracking, and ban mountaintop removal coal mining." See the article for more.

You know that primaries matter -- and when it
comes to the future of our country and the world, presidential primaries
matter exponentially. Our presidential nominee will set the tone for
the entire Democratic Party in this extremely pivotal election year.

DFA
was founded out of the presidential primary in 2004, and our members
have voted on whether or not we should get involved in every contested
presidential primary since then. While we've always done powerful and
effective work in presidential campaigns, DFA
has never actually endorsed a specific candidate in a contested
presidential primary before. But that could all change this year, IF one
candidate receives the support of a super-majority of DFA's members.

The
very first votes in the 2016 election will be cast on February 1 in
Iowa. This means that, if we endorse, we will immediately hit the ground
running, devoting real resources -- people, time and money -- to
helping your chosen candidate win the nomination.

DFA
is a people-powered organization. To maximize your opportunity to vote
and to rally your friends and family to vote too, we're keeping this
poll open until 11:59pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, December 15.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

"For reasons hard to fathom, the Republicans seem to have made up
their minds: they will divide, degrade and secede from the Union. They
will do so with bullying, lies and manipulation, a willingness to say
anything, no matter how daft or wrong. They will do so by spending
unheard of sums to buy elections with the happy assistance of big
business and wealthy patrons for whom the joys of gross income
inequality are a comfortable fact of life. By gerrymandering and denying
the vote to as many of the poor, the elderly, struggling
low-paid workers, and people of color as they can. And by appealing to
the basest impulses of human nature: anger, fear and bigotry. [...] Donald Trump is just the most outrageous and bigmouthed of the frothing wolf pack of deniers and truth benders."

Continuing from the last post, look
at this chart from Maalouf's IW article. Note how Germany and northern
Europe are entering functional democracy from social democracy. And how
the US is just entering social democracy, with a big setback of course
by Wall Street oligarchy. Hence Sanders agenda is on the cusp of healthy
social democracy leading to functional democracy. Note his use of FDR
as an example of the former and Scandinavia as an example of the latter
for where the US could be.

See this article. "The Finnish government is currently drawing up plans
to introduce a national basic income. A final proposal won’t be
presented until November 2016, but if all goes to schedule, Finland will
scrap all existing benefits and instead hand out €800 ($870) per
month—to everyone."

Saturday, December 5, 2015

In this speech she makes clear how Wall Street is trying to roll back financial regulation by hiding it in amendments in the must-pass government funding bill instead of trying to do it openly. And Republicans are happy to do it this way, since it provides cover for their obvious payoffs and not having to have it on record they they openly supported such hidden rollbacks. Warren makes clear that in these amendments you are either for working people or Wall Street; there is no in-between in this case. These rollbacks will directly lead to yet another financial crisis where Wall Street profits outrageously while we the people are stuck with the bill when such reckless behavior crashes the economy once again.

See this article. Instead of the Supreme Corp that it has become it would once again become a Court because he'd require his nominees to repeal Citizens United. He also requires they promote a woman's right to choose. And no cabinet posts for Wall Street lackeys.

"Fritjof Capra and Ugo Mattei argue that at the root of
many of the environmental, economic, and social crises we face today is a
legal system based on an obsolete worldview. Capra, a bestselling
author, physicist, and systems theorist, and Mattei, a distinguished
legal scholar, explain how, by incorporating concepts from modern
science, the law can become an integral part of bringing about a better
world, rather than facilitating its destruction.

Friday, December 4, 2015

They are the US Open showcase champs this year. Benji has dominated this division for over a decade with 4 or 5 different partners. I'm not that crazy about this routine or his exaggerated facial expressions.

They do it again, winning the US Open west coast swing classic division. Beautiful, touching performance. The video makes clear this is their final performance in this venue. I don't know why but they will be missed, having dominated the division for over a decade.

Yes they did. A Bill came before them that would close the loophole that allows those on a terrorist no-fly list to buy guns and most Republicans voted against it. Of course they offer the smokescreen that some on that list don't belong there, but this presumes many do. So they'd rather let those many that are legitimate terrorist threats buy guns to kill Americans than work for a more accurate list. They've lost all sense of perspective on the gun issue. And several others, like they also voted to gut Obamacare again and defund Planned Parenthood. This is what you get with Republicans these days.